As the Web continues to develop, most of us are wondering, "What is next?" The answer is HTML5 and CSS3. Both of these new markup languages have a vast number of improvements over the previous versions.
HTML5 is the latest update to the HTML and XHTML markup family. HTML5 has many major improvements. First, it has new types of tags. In place of <div> or <span> tags, other tags can be used. For example, the navigation on the page can be enclosed in a <nav> tag, or a website footer can be enclosed by a <footer> tag. These new tags make it easier to see your markup by eliminating the chore of searching through div tags with various ids and classes. Second, HTML5 adds support for embedding videos. Long gone are the days of using flash to embed videos on your website. As of now, the feature is supported poorly on most browsers, but is getting updated in the next major browser releases. Lastly, HTML has its own set of API's that can be used with it. Canvas, Geo-location, and drag-and-drop are just a few. HTML 5 is going to look more and more like a programming language than just a set of tags on a page.
The most current project in the CSS realm is CSS3. There are many differences in CSS3 besides the 3 at the end of the name. First, there are totally new selectors and selector methods. To make a table's row background alternate color's, one would usually have to check the color, make sure it's the opposite of the current color, and if not change the color. This can all be done using a new selector in CSS3 in one fell swoop. There are many more selectors like the previously mentioned that help designers make better designs while using less bandwidth or server space. Next, CSS3 has a bunch of new effects. Text-shadow, RGBA colors (RGB with opacity), HSL colors (Hue, Saturation, Lightness), and multiple backgrounds are just a few. Most of these features would greatly improve the way that people design websites. I cannot wait to see what it looks like when all the browsers are compatible with it.
As of now, HTML5 and CSS3 are a long way off from being implemented in everyday web design. HTML5 is hoping to become a W3C Candidate Recommendation by 2012, and a full on recommendation in 2022. CSS3 is currently in the working draft phase. This means that it will still be a while until the W3C will recommend it for use. This does not mean that web developers are not allowed to use HTML5 and CSS3; it just means that they are not recommended by the standards committee (W3C). One of the major reasons that it is going to take so long for all of these new languages to become recommendations is the current web browsers. Most of the major web browsers only support a handful of features that CSS3 and HTML5 sport. Many browser companies are hard at work to make their browsers compatible with these new technologies, but these updates do take time.